silver tongue, black heart
by I'vebeenLOKI'Dyetagain
Summary: "The raindrops collect in your hair, and mourning doves' cries echo in your stare. You open your fingers, slowly from a fist to an open palm, and the lines there tell stories of what will go wrong."


**And yes, yet_ another_ chaotic one-shot. Woohoo! They're too much fun ;3**

**I can only hope it makes some sort of sense...**

**It's written using 'you' but it's not really second-person - rather than being from Loki's POV second-person, it's more first-person (though 'I' is never mentioned) of someone talking to/about Loki - which could either be an extremely perceptive and poetic Avenger, or else perhaps it's some voice in Loki's head... or some other being observing the goings on of our favorite trickster. Who knows? Maybe it's Yggdrasil or the Fates or something. I'm not actually sure. **

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Sky-Treader, alighting atop a skyscraper, preening yourself. (You prideful creature.)

Your shadow is tossed cold along the ground, lying willingly at your feet.

Head to the side, chin tilted up, your eyes feral and piercing, a visceral green; positively blinding in the black light, glowing red in the twilight, in the firelight glinting gold.

Your body tensed in latent menace, latent power; a king among monsters.

Black nails and graceful horns.

Blue spirals upwards, curling off your body like steam. And the cloud-cover dances cloud-shadows on the ground, black and white, white and black. Then the thunderheads come, gray—and bathe the world in shadow.

Lightning—lost thoughts alight amongst stars and nothing. Thunder rolls, clouds roiling and thickening like whipped cream spread across the sky.

The raindrops collect in your hair, and mourning doves' cries echo in your stare. You open your fingers, slowly from a fist to an open palm, and the lines there tell stories of what will go wrong.

With those spidery, spidery fingers, you stole away the very stars; darkened the night until it matched your heart.

Your veins are on fire, pulsing blue beneath your pallid skin, and you laugh at the burn, thinking you've turned your sentiments to ashes.

But oh you never will learn.

False king, you're whispering something in the dark. (Your fires are ravenous; your words are cavernous.)

Everyone always bends to your will without ever being aware of it, as you back-stab and double-cross until it's intangible who's side you're ever on.

Your silver tongue crafts alloys of lies and truths, twisting the hair-thin wire into pieces of jewelery they wear willingly around their wrists and necks, out of their greed and need to believe—and oh, they may doubt the merit of the gems with which you embellish your works of silver (it's not the gems they should doubt—but rather the designs carved in the side), yet when they bite them they discover them true, and find your work flawless and fine.

Master of Shadows, Spinner of Lies, Creature of Chaos: you instigate the end.

Looking farther, further still. You're so brilliant that everything around you burns.

Your mind is labyrinthine, with infinite twists and turns. Your smile is maddening as hopeless you return.

Compromised, you let go of the reigns—and destruction runs rampant and wild, like a tortured beast broke free.

And you would do it again (and again and again).

Oh, the world can burn. You can't care less.

Why not be worst, if you can't be best? Because you might as well stand out from all the rest.

So you leap and you fall, hunker down in your nest, find yourself a second chance and clutch in close to your chest. Then you throw it away and make one hell of a mess.

Breath in, breath out; the shadows gone, you hide in more than empty places—you hide behind empty faces with no sentimental traces.

With a swish, with a twirl, you spin on your heels make your coattails whirl.

You shy from love like darkness from flame, flee to safer places. And the tomes of your soul lie in shelves upon shelves in the back of a closet, behind your metal and leather armor, your elegant coats and your silken scarves.

And the wind whines at the door of your tower like a puppy left out in the rain and the cold, its pawing at the ground making the whole structure shake.

So you take your demons for a walk, as they drag lies form their feet like shackles and chains, gouging rifts in your mind's terrain that yawn voids and swallow you so you tumble uncontrollably into murky and shadowed recesses, boulevards that ring hallow with the cries dripping red from your lips.

Sharp shadows across your face; a smile that makes even monsters back up a pace.

You find it amusing how scared of the darkness the Aesir are, shying from it, even while tracking blood and gore through their brightly lit halls.

A humorless laugh echoes—yours.

They fear the cold and the way your lips start to turn blue.

Blue lips, from the cold?

Red eyes, from unshed tears?

How utterly are your rent, that you but curl up and wait for death? Don't let go. Oh please, do not let go.

You pick yourself apart, little by little. You tear and you rip and you rend and gouge and you gnaw,

till your mind is a bloodied, broken wreck, and the world is sharp, bright and hard and diamond-edged.

Jagged shards of ruby hatred collect in your hollow smile.

And the world, it rubs you raw.

You peeled away your own skin (it was the wrong color and didn't fit), and the elements lashed across your flesh, exposing your bones with all their marks of being broken and mended.

And you bleed crimson and you bleed vermilion and you bleed sanguine... you're a starving creature.

But skeletons don't feel pain, and skeletons don't feel cold; because that's all you are now, isn't it?

When all your lies are stripped away, and the monster within claws its way through the bars of your ribcage, right where your heart should be?

When you fall into sleep, you fall like vivid autumn leaves, veins thrumming like maroon flame.

But hiding there, blue, you'll never blend in.

If you mixed all their colors of the Asgard, it would be a golden buff, dark amber lightened to bronze

by all the time the Aesir spend in the sun, brazing their brazen hearts. Shining eyes and metal teeth, they tore straight through your tender night-drenched flesh, culling out all the stars that coruscated in your heart.

You reached out for the one who's pride you'd always craved, but his words come out wrong, dropping like Mjolnir to the ground.

You bruised black, black and blue; a breath, a sigh, a blink of the eye, and just like that you were gone, lost in the convoluted branches of Yggdrasil.

But nobody came for you (and nobody would come), so you began to wander, letting each step take you farther into the dark. But no matter where you go, you're never any farther or closer to home.

You've got everywhere to run to. Just nowhere to stay.

You're tired, you're so, so tired, and the denial runs in rivulets down your cheeks distorting your smile into a dangerous, tenuous grin.

Your heart pounding; pounding against your ribs.

Lifeless? Not likely, despite how you continue to grow cold.

(Your breath no longer fogs up the windows, and you can see out clearly.)

You weren't wrong when you thought that perhaps the sky weeps for you, weeps your tears so you don't have to; that perhaps the wind screams for you, screams all your rage and pain so you don't have to.

The world is trying to stick you in a box, and force you down the gullets of fate, and you laugh because: what are walls to you? You conjure them up and crumble them down on whim. They do but set margins of matter, and ever have you been one to fray and tangle threads till there is no definite edge.

And walls here, they have no meaning—for the light and the darkness intermingle.

So quiet, just so quietly, quietly slip by them, like a snake you slither cold-blooded and undetected (you see in infrared).

Straight into their hearts, and nestle there, with your intense eyes and hypnotic stare.

(Moving ever silent, you see in ultraviolet.)

But oh, when you were younger you used to try to curl up and disappear, crumble into yourself till you weren't there. Crawl into the shadows and hide there in the dark, where they couldn't find you and tear you apart.

You would open your eyes and counted the stars—anything but think about the failure you are.

But they found you. Of course they found you.

Quick gasping, rasping breaths, as the world blurred before your eyes. The sky spun, pirouetting around your head with its tutu of clouds, rimmed with a horizon of trees.

And the lights and the noises came towards you, as you tried to flee back to the safety of darkness. But you couldn't walk straight, couldn't even see straight.

You tripped on something—you still don't know what—but you ended up sprawled on the rocky ground, jagged stones poking into your spine.

You braced yourself for the light, clenching your eyes shut.

But it was no use.

The glaring flames ate you alive, searing your flesh and gnawing it off your bones. Blinding you, blinding you, and scorching your sensitive heart _black. _

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**I hope you enjoyed, and thank you for reading! ^.^ Please let me know what you think!  
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